Chapter 15 Chapter 12 The Spartan Influence

To understand Plato, and in fact, to understand many later philosophers, it is necessary to know something about Sparta.Sparta played a double role on Greek thought: on the one hand through reality, on the other through myth; and both are important.Reality enabled the Spartans to defeat Athens in war, and myth influenced Plato's political theory and that of countless writers afterward.The full development of mythology is found in Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus; a large part of the ideals celebrated there formed the doctrine of Rousseau, Nietzsche, and National Socialism.Historically, this myth has been even more important than reality; yet we will start with reality.Because reality is the root of myth.

Laconia, with Sparta or Lacidemon as its capital, possessed the southeastern part of the Peloponnesus.The Spartans were the ruling race, and when the Dorians invaded from the north, they conquered the area and reduced the original inhabitants to serfdom.These serfs were called Helot.At all times in history the whole land belonged to the Spartans, yet the laws and customs of the Spartans forbade them to cultivate the land themselves; .Serfs could not be bought and sold, but were attached to the land; the land was divided into lots, and each adult Spartan male had a lot or lots.These lands, like Hilot, cannot be bought or sold, and the law stipulates that they are inherited from father to son (however, they can be gifted by will).The landlord himself collects seventy medneys (approximately 105 bushels) of grain each year from helot who cultivates the allotment, and twelve medneys for his wife, as well as a certain amount of wine and fruit .Everything beyond this amount is the property of Helot.Helotes were also Greeks, like the Spartans, and they deeply hated their enslavement.Whenever possible, they rebelled.The Spartans had a secret police against this danger, but to supplement this vigilance they had another method: they declared war on Helot once a year, so that their young men could kill It would not be a homicide to kill anyone who appeared to be untamed.The state could release Helot, but not Helot's master; Helot was freed--which was, of course, rather rare--by virtue of exceptional valor in battle.

At one point in the eighth century B.C. the Spartans conquered the region adjacent to Mecinia, and reduced most of its inhabitants to the condition of the Helotes.Sparta lacked "living space," but the new territory temporarily removed the source of this discontent. Allotments were for common Spartans; nobility had their own domains, and allotments were patches of public land allotted by the state. The free inhabitants of the rest of Laconia, called PeriDoeci, enjoyed no political power. The only occupation of a Spartan citizen is war, and he is trained for war from birth.After being inspected by the tribal chiefs, sick children are abandoned; only healthy children can be raised.All boys are trained in a large school until they are twenty years old; the purpose of the training is to make them strong, not afraid of pain, and subject to discipline.Literate or scientific education is regarded as meaningless business; the only purpose is to make good soldiers who will serve the country wholeheartedly.

At the age of 20, real military service begins.Anyone may marry after twenty, but a man must live in a "men's home" until he is thirty; and marriage must be treated as if it were an illegal secret.After thirty, he was a full-fledged citizen.Every citizen belongs to a canteen, and eats with the other members; he must contribute a part in kind from the produce of his allotment.The theory of the Spartan state was that no citizen should be poor, nor should a single citizen be rich.Each lived only on the produce of his own allotment, which could not be transferred except as a free gift.No one could privately own gold and silver, and currency was made of iron.The simplicity of Sparta is well-known.

Spartan women had a special status.They were not isolated from the world, as were women of position elsewhere in Greece.Girls are also subjected to the same physical exercise as boys; what is more remarkable is that boys and girls exercise naked together.They demanded (I quote Knowles' translation of Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus below): Girls should also practice running, wrestling, discus throwing, javelin throwing, the purpose is that the children they will later conceive can draw nourishment from their strong bodies, so that they can grow strong and develop better; This kind of exercise strengthens the constitution and can relieve the pain of childbirth. ... Although the girls are indeed so openly naked, there is nothing wrong with it that is never seen or felt, and all this movement is full of playfulness without any eroticism or lasciviousness.

Those who would not marry were "criminalized" and obliged, even in the coldest climates, to wander naked outside places where young men exercised and danced. Women are not allowed to show any feeling against the country, they may despise a coward, and if the coward they despise is their own son, they will be praised; They were not allowed to grieve if they were executed, or if their son died in battle.They are recognized by the rest of the Greeks as the most virtuous; but if a married woman is barren, the state orders her to try whether other men are more fertile citizens than her own husband. If so, she will not have any resistance.Childbearing is encouraged by legislation.According to Aristotle, a father who had three sons was exempt from military service, and who had four sons was exempt from all burdens to the state.

Sparta's constitution was very complicated.There are two kings, belonging to two different families, and are hereditary.One of the two kings commands the army in time of war, but in peace their power is limited.At public feasts they had twice as much food as the rest; and when the king died, all mourned him.They are members of the Council of Elders, which is composed of thirty members (including the two kings), and the remaining twenty-eight members must be over sixty years old and elected by all citizens to serve for life, but only from Elected from noble families.The Council of Elders judges crimes and prepares the agenda for the Citizens' Assembly.The Citizens' Assembly includes all citizens; it cannot initiate any motions of its own initiative, but has the power to vote for or against any proposals addressed to it.Any law without its consent is void.Yet its assent, though necessary, was not sufficient; the decision had to be pronounced by the elders and magistrates before it could take effect.

Besides the two kings, the council of elders, and the assembly of citizens, the government included a fourth component, which was peculiar to Sparta.That's five inspectors.They were elected from among all the citizens; the method of election, according to Aristotle, was "too naive"; according to Bury, it was practically a drawing of lots.The Ombudsman is a "democratic" element in the constitution, apparently to balance the crown.The king is required to take an oath every month to uphold the constitution; then the censors take an oath, and they will support the king as long as the oath is kept.When any king went to war, two inspectors followed him to monitor his actions.The Ombudsman is the highest civil court, but they can conduct criminal trials for the king.

At the end of antiquity, Sparta's constitution is believed to be attributed to a legislator named Lycurgus, who is said to have enacted his laws in 885 BC.In fact, the Spartan institution grew gradually, while Lycurgus was only a mythical figure, originally a god.His name means "Wolf Driver," and the god is of Arcadian origin.Sparta aroused among the other Greeks an admiration which astonishes us somewhat.At first it was not so different from the other Greek cities as it was later; in earlier times it produced poets and artists as good as elsewhere.But by about the seventh century B.C., and perhaps even later, its constitution (falsely attributed to Lycurgus) was fixed in the form we are speaking of; And sacrificed everything else, so Sparta no longer has any status in the contribution of Greece to world civilization.In our view, the Spartan state was a prototype of the kind the Nazis would have established had they been victorious.But to the Greeks, it doesn't seem to be the case.As Burry puts it:

A stranger from Athens or Miletus in the fifth century B.C. must have had a feeling of being in ancient times when he visited the scattered villages that made up the modest city-state of Sparta without walls. The people of the world are braver, kinder, and more simple, who are not corrupted by wealth, nor troubled by ideas.To a philosopher who, like Plato, pondered the problems of politics, the Spartan state seemed the closest thing to an ideal.Ordinary Greeks regard Sparta as a temple of austere and simple beauty, a Dorian city-state as solemn as the temple of Doria, which is much more noble than his own residence, but it is not worth living in. Not so comfortable.One of the reasons other Greeks admired Sparta was its stability.All other Greek city-states had revolutions, but the constitution of Sparta remained unchanged for hundreds of years; only the power of the censor was gradually increased, but it was legal and never used Violence.

We cannot deny that for a very long time the Spartans were successful in their chief aim, namely, in creating a race of invincible warriors.The Battle of Hot Spring Gap (480 BC), although technically a failure, is perhaps the clearest example of their bravery.Hot Spring Gorge is a passage between the mountains, and the Greeks hoped to stop the Persian army here.Three hundred Spartans and their retinue withstood all frontal attacks.But at last the Persians saw a retreat through the mountains, and at once attacked the Greeks on both sides.Every Spartan died at his post.Only two people were absent due to sick leave, suffering from eye diseases that amounted to temporary blindness.One of them insisted that his Helot lead him to the field, where he was killed by the enemy; the other, Aristodemus, thought himself too ill to fight, and did not go into battle.When he returned to Sparta no one took him seriously; they called him "Aristodemus the coward."A year later, he washed away his shame and died a heroic death at the Battle of Plataea, where the Spartans were victorious. After the war, the Spartans erected a monument on the battlefield of Hot Spring Gorge, which only read: "Passers-by, please send a message to the Rasidemonians, we lie here and obey their orders." For a long time, the Spartans proved themselves invincible on land.They maintained their supremacy until their defeat by the Thebes at the Battle of Leuktra in 371 BC.This battle ended Spartan military greatness. Except in matters of war, Spartan practice has always been at odds with theory.Herodotus, who lived in the heyday of Sparta, mentioned amazingly that no Spartan could refuse bribes, despite the fact that contempt for wealth and a simple life are exactly what Spartan education taught. The main content of inculcation.The women of Sparta were said to be very chaste, yet on several occasions famous heirs to the throne were deposed because they were not the sons of their mother's husbands.It is said that the Spartans are patriotic and unyielding. However, the winner of the Battle of Plataea, King Pausanias of Sparta, was finally bought by the Persian king Xerksius and became a traitor.Apart from these egregious things, Spartan policy was often narrow and territorial.While Athens liberated the Greeks in Asia Minor and the adjacent islands from the Persians, Sparta stood by; as long as the Peloponnesus was secure, the fate of the other Greeks was indifferent to Sparta.Every attempt to unite the Greek world into a federation was frustrated by Spartan narrow-mindedness. Aristotle gave a very hostile account of Sparta's constitution when Sparta fell.What he says is so different from what others say, that it is hard to believe that he said it from the same place; e.g.: "The legislator, who wished to make hard restraint throughout the country, enforced his purpose upon men, But he neglects women, who lead a life of luxury and luxury of every kind. The result is that in such a country wealth is overvalued, especially when the citizens are at the mercy of their wives. , as most warlike races do. . . Even in terms of courage (which is not needed in everyday life, but only in war), the influence of the women of Lacidemonium was Terrible.... The lasciviousness of the women of Lacidemon was ancient and expected. Therefore (according to tradition) when Lycurgus wanted to make the women subject to his law When the women resisted; Lycurgus gave up the attempt." Aristotle also condemned the greed of the Spartans, which he attributed to the unequal distribution of property.He said that although allotment land is not allowed to be bought or sold, it can be gifted or passed on to future generations.He added that two-fifths of all land belonged to women.As a result, the number of citizens was greatly reduced: Sparta is said to have had ten thousand citizens, but by the time it was defeated by Thebes, it had fewer than a thousand. Aristotle criticized every point of the Spartan constitution.He said that the censors were often very poor, so they were easy to bribe; and their power was so great that even the king had to curry favor with them, so that the government of Sparta had been transformed into a democracy.The censors, he told us, were in excess, that their way of life was so contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, and that the severity of the ordinary citizen was so unbearable that the citizen indulged in secret and illegitimate carnal pleasures for the sake of escape. When Aristotle wrote these words, Sparta was already in decay; yet in some places he expressly stated that the evils he referred to were ancient.His tone is so crisp and conclusive that it is difficult not to believe him, and it agrees with all modern experience of the excessive severity of the law.However, what remains in people's imagination is not the Sparta described by Aristotle, but the mythical Sparta described by Plutarch and the philosophical ideal in Plato's "Nation". Transformed Sparta.For centuries young men have read these works and burned with an ambition to be a Lycurgus or a philosopher-king.The combination of idealism and love of power has led people astray time and time again, and it still does so today. As far as medieval and modern readers are concerned, the myth of Sparta is largely fixed by Plutarch.When he wrote, Sparta was already a romantic past; Sparta's grandeur was as distant from Plutarch's time as Columbus is from ours.All that Plutarch says must be dealt with with extreme caution by the historian of institutions, but it is of primary importance to the historian of mythology.Greece once influenced the whole world, but it often worked through her imagination, ideals and hopes for people, rather than directly through political power.Rome built many great roads, most of which are still preserved, and Roman law is the source of many modern codes, but it was the Roman army that made these things important.The Greeks, though admirable warriors, were not conquered, for their forces were chiefly expended against each other.It was not until the semi-barbarous Alexander that he spread Greek culture throughout the Near East and made Greek the literary language of Egypt, Syria, and the interior parts of Asia Minor.The Greeks could never accomplish such an enterprise, not because they lacked force, but because they could not be politically united.The political transmitters of Hellenistic culture were never Greeks; but it was the Greek genius which stirred other peoples, and caused them to spread the culture of their conquerors. What matters to historians all over the world is not the petty wars between the Greek city-states, nor the dastardly contests of factional power, but the memory preserved by mankind when these brief episodes are over. ,——this is just like our memory of a glorious sunrise in the Alps, while the mountain dwellers struggled through a snowy day.As these memories faded, there remained in the minds of certain mountain vistas so brightly lit in the first light of the morning, and always with the knowledge that behind the clouds there was still a light, and that at any moment can show up.The most important of these are Plato in the early Christian era and Aristotle in the medieval church period; but after the Renaissance, when people began to value freedom, they first turned to Plutarch.Plutarch profoundly influenced the English and French liberals of the eighteenth century and the founders of America; he influenced the German Romantic movement, and continued to influence German thought, mainly in indirect lines, until Nowadays.His influence was in some ways good, in others bad; and as regards the accounts of Lycurgus and Sparta, his influence was bad.The Lycurgus which he speaks of is of great importance, and I shall give a brief account of it, even without some repetition. Lycurgus - so Plutarch said - resolved to legislate for Sparta, and traveled about in order to study the various institutions.He liked the "very clear and severe" laws of Crete, but he did not like the laws of Ionia, which were "vain and shallow."In Egypt, he learned the benefits of separating soldiers from other peoples, and when he returned from his travels, "he took it to Sparta to implement: it was stipulated that merchants, craftsmen, and laborers should keep their respective divisions, so he build up a noble nation".He distributed the land equally to all the citizens of Sparta in order to "drive out all bankruptcy, envy, greed and enjoyment, and all wealth and poverty."He forbade gold and silver money, and only iron money was allowed, so lowly appraised that "ten minas' worth of sums would be stored up, and a whole hoard would be filled."By this means he swept away "all vain learning," for there was not so much money to pay those who practiced it; and by this law he made all foreign trade impossible. thing.Rhetoricians, whorehousekeepers, and jewelers disliked iron money, and avoided Sparta.Then he stipulated that all citizens must eat together, and everyone eats the same meal. Lycurgus, like other reformers, considered the education of children to be "the chief and most important thing that a reformer should fix"; anxious to increase the birth rate. "Girls play, play, and dance naked before young men, in order to seduce them into marriage: they are not persuaded, as Plato says, by reasoning of geometry, but Married because men and women love each other happily."It is customary to keep the marriage a secret affair in the first few years, "the two parties still continue to be passionately in love, and the mutual desire is renewed every day"-at least this is Plutarch's opinion.He also explained that a man who is old and has a young wife is not thought badly of him if he allows her to have children with other young men. "It is lawful for an upright man to fall in love with another man's wife. . . . He may ask her husband to let him sleep with her, so that he may reclaim this rich land and sow Ningxin Jiaer Seed".There can never be any foolish envy here, for "Lycurgus would not let the child belong to any private property, but the child should belong to the public: Not all of them are fertile, but only the most upright.” He goes on to explain that this is the principle the farmer applies to his livestock. After a child was born, the father took him to the elders of the family for examination: if the child was healthy, he would be returned to his father to raise; if the child was not healthy, he would be thrown into a deep pool.It is good in some respects that the children are strictly exercised from the first—not wrapped in bandages, for example.At the age of seven, boys will leave their families and be placed in boarding schools. They are divided into several groups, and each group chooses a sensible and brave child to give orders. "As for learning, they only learn what is useful to them: the rest of the time they learn how to obey, how to bear pain, how to bear labor, how to overcome the enemy in battle."They play together naked most of the time; after the age of twelve they wear no coats; Do not take a shower.They sleep on straw beds, and in winter they mix velvet flowers with grass.They were taught to steal, but they were punished if they were caught--not for stealing, but for stealing clumsily. Homosexuality, male or female, was a recognized practice in Sparta and was a formal part of the education of adolescent boys.A boy's lover may be credited or punished for the boy's behaviour; Plutarch relates a time when a boy cried out because he had been wounded in battle, and his lover took credit for the boy's cowardice. and imprisoned.A Spartan has no freedom at any stage of his life. Their discipline and order of life continue even after they are fully grown.It is illegal for anyone to live as he pleases. They are in their own city-state as if they were in a military camp. What must be done.In short, they share the feeling that they are not born to serve themselves, but to serve their country. ...One of the best and happiest things Lycurgus has brought to his city is that he affords his citizens a great deal of rest and leisure, but only forbids them from doing anything mean and wicked: and Nor do they have to worry about trying to get rich, where goods are neither useful nor valued.Because Helot (these are all prisoners of war) plowed the fields for them and paid them a certain amount of rent every year. Plutarch goes on to tell the story of an Athenian who was punished for being idle, and a Spartan who heard about it cried out and said, "Take me to this man, who for living a noble life , like a gentleman, so he was punished." Lycurgus (continued by Plutarch): "disciplines his citizens so that they neither want to live alone nor can they live alone, but live in conjunction with one another; they Always all together, just as bees surround their queen." The Spartans were not allowed to travel abroad, and foreigners were not allowed to enter Sparta except for special reasons, because they were afraid that foreign fashion would corrupt the Lasidemonian virtue. Plutarch mentions that the laws of the Spartans allowed them to massacre their Helots whenever they pleased; but Plutarch did not believe that Lycurgus could be blamed for such an abomination. "For I cannot believe that Lycurgus could have instituted or enacted such monstrous laws: for I imagine, from the kindness and justice which he so often exhibits in all his other acts, that his character was tender and benevolent."Apart from this one incident, Plutarch has nothing but praise for the Spartan constitution. The influence of Sparta on Plato is evident from the account of Plato's own Utopia in the next chapter; we shall now speak of Plato in particular.